Centralized Programs for Lead Source and UTM Tracking

In a recent Office Hour session, the Perkuto team was asked about having a centralized program for lead source tracking and multi-touch UTM tracking.

Lead Source Tracking

First, Justin Norris, Solutions Architect at Perkuto, discussed the option of building or buying a tracking infrastructure. An out-of-the-box solution works well for the majority of businesses. With the build-your-own model, custom tracking scripts can be deployed and converted to cookies in a user’s system, using that data to sort potential clients and users into campaigns. While the customization possibilities are enormous in that environment, a marketer would still need analytic software to process the data. Justin recommends Visible Analyst because the tracking is built into every touch point. It’s like having Google Analytics plugged into every step of your campaign. Unfortunately, however, the reports aren’t robust enough to manipulate the data and tie the results into your life cycle. So it works well for tracking but the data it serves isn’t always useful for strategic planning. Different tools have their own distinctive features and benefits. Other popular options are:

Marketo RCE

Salesforce

BrightFunnel

Lead Processing

On the topic of centralized lead processing, Justin says that it’s important to have a working model of the life cycle of each lead, so that each event triggers the next logical event in the process. Justin gives a typical example of a lead processing life cycle:

The lead is created, a web hook retrieves additional data to enrich the lead’s profile, a lead is scored, and then routed to the CRM. If those processes are occurring in the wrong order, sales staff can receive incomplete data. Each of those processes needs to be daisy-chained together in a way that makes sense and makes it easy for the sales team to do their job.

A rigorous testing grid should be applied before the system is determined functional. Life cycle processing is the heart of your system and little things that don’t work can snowball into missed opportunities. Here’s a short video that captured part of the conversation: